From Eating Clean To Eating Disorder
Dispelling eating disorder myths. Plus an easy air fryer breakfast hack and 2022 food trends.
 |
This week’s Best, is a continuation of last week’s—on how veganism is used to virtue-signal and validate our morals—I recommend you read it first.
Back in the 70s, a doctor by the name of Steven Bratman witnessed his patients healing themselves with food while working on a commune as a cook and farmer. He noticed their steadfast conviction that the meatless, macrobiotic, dairy-free, unsweetened, raw foods they were devout to were the “healthiest.” He coined the term “orthorexia” (combining the Greek word, orthos, meaning “correct” with Latin’s orexis for “appetite” or “hunger”), to describe their behavior, what he considered to be an eating disorder.
Today, orthorexia simply means taking healthy eating to an extreme, and it runs rampant among vegan influencers, many of whom have rebranded, or abandoned their platforms altogether when they realize their “healthy” advice has gone too far. Like, Lee Tilghman (aka Lee From America), who completely overhauled her wellness blog in 2018 after developing orthorexia. Whether it’s intermittent fasting or eating low sugar, the plant-based space is filled with diet-culture messaging, which can be dangerously tempting for the vegan whose diet is motivated, even in the slightest, by a desire to feel “clean.”
While it’s a slippery slope for a vegan to develop a disordered obsession with eating clean, the same is true in the inverse—for those recovering from an eating disorder, veganism can be used as another form of restriction. It’s for this reason eating disorder treatment centers refuse vegan clients. One UK study from 2013 found that two thirds of participants with a history of eating disorders said being vegetarian provided them another way to restrict and feel in control. Eating plant-based becomes another set of rules to obsess over.
As someone trying to recover from orthorexia, I’m extra careful to not slip back down the rabbit hole of clean eating when I dabble in veganism. Do I feel like I’m a better person when I imagine my meat cultivated from soy in a lab rather than slaughtered in a factory? No. Do I feel like I’m more “pure” when my grocery bag is filled with organic produce and vegan cheese puffs from The Big Carrot instead of Cheetos and Snack Packs from No Frills? Yes. The answers aren’t clear-cut, but these are the kind of questions I’m asking myself.
A few years ago, I’d choose a vegan restaurant because I thought I could find “cleaner” food there—less processed, less overly salted, and ultimately lower in calories. I maintained the false assumption that the purity associated with veganism meant eating plant-based was “healthier.” And while there is evidence that eating more plants does have health benefits, the reality is many of the vegan products on the market are processed and just as high (if not higher) in calories than their meat counterparts.
It’s for this reason I’ve been using them to ease back into all the foods I’ve cut out over the years. Instead of Halo Top, I’m eating coconut milk-based ice cream that’s more calorically dense than Haagen-Daz. While eating the latter would probably still evoke a tinge of guilt, the plant-based version helps me bridge my fears by not carrying all the associations with full-fat ice cream. Cashew nut cheese, soy-based steak—I can’t moralize these foods as “good” or “bad” because they exist in a category entirely of their own.
While at first glance, morality appears to be at the root of veganism, I see it as freed from the morals of diet culture: by being kinder to the planet, I cultivate a sense of compassion around food rather than guilt and shame. Plus, the creativity plant-based cooking necessitates opens up a sense of curiosity that makes it harder to form labels or rules. I know what cheddar tastes like, and my internalized fatphobia has already deemed it as “unhealthy,” but I’ve never tried one made from cashews, and so I just have to try it for comparison. Plant-based eating makes food not only exciting again, but empowering; unlike it’s animal counterparts, it hasn’t been marinating for years in diet culture, it’s served on a blank slate—the eater gets the final verdict.
It’s for this reason I think there’s been so much hub bub about Eleven Madison Park’s new 10-course, $335 plant-based menu. No one has eaten a beet out of pottery shards smashed with a silver hammer before. Rather than viewed as a substitute, the vegan creations are the first of their kind. As David Kortava writes, “You can evaluate a vegan dish on its own terms, mentally setting aside whatever fleshy alias it’s been assigned.” Similarly, Adam Platt writes, “I don’t view them as fake meat. I view them as delicious in their own right.”
The innovation invites everyone to form their own opinion, including renowned NYT critic Pete Wells, whose harsh review concludes “Diners who don’t eat animals for religious or moral reasons will probably welcome the new menu.” (Clearly, I’m not the only one who fixates on the motivation behind eating plant-based). But as Alicia Kennedy critiques, “such assumptions suggest that there is no overlap in people’s reasons for not eating meat.”
The reality is our intentions are messy, there are many layers to veganism’s allure. But implicit in Wells’ assumption is also the idea that how much pleasure we derive from what we eat depends on why we’re eating it. I think there is some truth to this—a plant-based lasagna tastes better when my eating it is driven by curiosity to try cashew ricotta, rather than by a desire to cut calories. While I’m still on the fence about going full vegan, I’ll continue to dabble, revelling in a newfound sense of playfulness and taking stock of how my pleasure shifts depending on my “why,” in an attempt to find food freedom.
Best,
Anna
Published 📝
Forbes - The Top Wellness Trends To Look For In The Grocery Aisle Next Year
Every year, Whole Foods Market assembles a team of 50+ “foragers” (trend-hunters) and culinary experts to curate a list of the top anticipated food trends for the following year. The newest report, released this week, highlights the continued blurring of the supplement and food aisles, as consumers increasingly take the “food as medicine” approach.
The 2022 list also shows how the pandemic has made us not only more concerned with eating in a way that supports our bodies, but the planet too, with climate-conscious grains and flexitarianism on the rise.
Trends to look out for in the grocery aisle next year? Fuzzy drinks that go beyond your average can of pop with added ingredients targeting specific health concerns, and even more inventive boozeless beverages (the sober-curious trend is here to stay). Expect to see nutritionally-packed plants and spices—like moringa, yuzu and sunflower seeds—in inventive food forms. Read on to my snack section for some of my favorite foods that highlight the trends!
I’m addicted to my air fryer! And while I’ve been swapping most of my meats for plant-based foods lately, I’m yet to find a satisfying alternative to eggs. When I’m pressed for time, I find hard-boiled the easiest. But they get boring. So I hacked these fancy cloud eggs in my air fryer and am truly bewildered by how little effort I had to put in for such a satisfying result—fluffy whipped eggs with a crispy skin!
Reading 📖
🏋🏾 Few writers have mastered the art of the celebrity profile like E. Alex Jung. His latest on Kumail Nanjiani does not disappoint.
“I had hoped I could somehow transcend the meanness of racism and homophobia with 16 individuated abdominal muscles. Nanjiani’s achievement is incredible, but it is also an expression of anxiety: of muscles that he hopes will affirm his value. He tells me this isn’t what happens. New body, same issues.” - E. Alex Jung.
📱 How should social media platforms moderate the gray area in eating disorder content?
⚖️ We wear trauma on our bodies — for some it’s gaining weight, for others it’s losing. (But let’s not assume a fat body is inherently traumatized).
“When trauma underlies fatness, we see the fat body as proof that someone has not coped well’ with their trauma; that they carry unresolved issues; that they have resorted to food and a disregard for self-care because they lack other coping skills.” -Virginia Sole-Smith.
🥃 What happens when an ex-drinker tries to find a sober buzz.
🌽 Dissecting the fear of GMOs.
“For many consumers, Alan Levinovitz notes, the word ‘natural’ has become a mental shortcut for deciding if something is good or safe. ‘There are all kinds of unnatural things that nobody worries about, like Netflix and indoor plumbing, but it’s become a kind of shorthand for this world we feel like we’ve lost.” - Jennifer Kahn.
🍾 On why rich people prefer glamorous restaurants with shitty food.
🍔 On the contrary, the best food is often the cheapest. Can the modern diner provide immigrant chefs with the respect they deserve?
👗 How do we dress for a body in limbo?
👡 Y2K fashion is back (was it ever out?), but let’s leave the fatphobia of it behind.
“Recent Y2K fashion discourse is missing some salient points, namely, any reference to women of color—or how the toxic combination of fatphobic media, fashion trends, and emerging social media channels created the perfect storm.” - Jess Sims.
👩💻 Millennials grew up hating their bodies, will Gen Z get it right?
🧘♀️ What your body is really telling you.
“I know that you put on yoga pants with no intention of exercising later. You’re not fooling anyone.” - Broti Gupta and Julia Edelman.
Watching 📺
In an early scene of Physical, Sheila (played by Rose Byrne) rents a motel room, strips down naked and ritualistically sets out a spread of burgers. She gorges, then showers. Watching commercials for low-carb diets on the 80s TV set, she vows to be better tomorrow, to eat “clean.”
The dark comedy, based on creator Annie Weisman’s own eating disorder journey, is refreshing in that it depicts a kind of woman we never see—an imperfect heroine with an inner monologue that’s as cruel towards other women as it is to herself. It’s also refreshing in the sense that it offers an accurate portrayal of binge-eating disorder, something rarely explored on screen despite being three times more common than anorexia and bulimia combined.
Amidst the diet culture crazy of the 1980s, the show dispels misconceptions about eating disorders by showing us that Sheila’s addiction is not about vanity, it’s a response to loss and trauma. She’s desperate for control, and she finds it not only in her rigid food rules, but in an aerobics class. The euphoric catharsis and power rush we see her get from her workouts demonstrates how fitness culture capitalizes on women’s insecurities to provide a false sense of empowerment.
I got Apple TV just to watch this show and it was worth every penny.
Listening 🎧
Maintenance Phase is my go-to for dispelling diet culture and this episode on eating disorders did not disappoint. Have you heard of atypical anorexia? It’s used to describe a person who has the symptoms of an eating disorder—like, restrictive behaviours and fear of weight gain—but don’t meet the low weight criteria.
Only 6 percent of people with eating disorders are underweight, which means most people with eating disorders fall into the atypical category (clearly the DSM is failing us if “atypical” is used to describe the majority).
Why does this matter? Because it means most people with eating disorders don’t qualify for treatment. According to Dr. Erin Harrop’s research, many fat people are in a starvation state, “We picture people who are starving and assume every body reacts the same way,” she says.
ED treatment models are not only failing fat people, but people of color too, by not incorporating their cooking techniques and foods. “The gains they make in treatment, they struggle to maintain if the treatment environment is too different from the environment you’re discharging home to,” says Dr. Harrop. “The foods that we conceive of as being ‘healthy’ are so framed up by the whiteness of the people making those determinations,” adds host Aubrey Gordon.
Snacking 🍌
Many of next year’s most anticipated ingredients are already in my pantry, and I can’t wait to see them in increasingly inventive forms. For now, I’m pairing salads dressed in a “living” lemon honey vinegar with a West African fonio pilaf made with moringa (the nutritious leaves from the drought-resistant “miracle tree”). When I do choose animal products, I’m opting for sustainable ones, like grass-fed jerky and up-cycled crispy salmon skins. As for snacks, I’m mixing coconut cashew granola with vanilla-spiced sunflower butter and topping with coconut greek yogurt that not only curbs my hunger, but that of someone in need too.
How do I get to talk to you ............. or better yet get you into my life????????????